Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman won a temporary injunction to block his extradition to the United States where he faces narcotics and arms trafficking charges, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

Guzman, who was Mexico's most wanted criminal and boss of the feared Sinaloa Cartel, was caught in the beach resort of Mazatlan with help from U.S. agents in a pre-dawn raid on Saturday.

The dramatic capture ended his reign as one of the world's most notorious organized crime bosses, and was a major victory for the Mexican government in a long, brutal war.

According to a Mexican justice official, Guzman's lawyers filed the injunction Monday after the spokesman for a U.S. federal prosecutor said he planned to seek the drug kingpin's extradition to face trial in the United States.

The injunction was approved on Tuesday but it remains unclear how long it will last, raising the possibility that the drug lord could remain in Mexico for a while.

"As long as the judge presides over the legal process, he can't be extradited," a court official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.

Jesus Murillo, Mexico's attorney general, said on Tuesday that Guzman's potential extradition will be analyzed by the government, but that he does not expect a quick resolution.

"I do not think it will happen soon," Murillo said in a radio interview.

Mexico's top prosecutor added that he received a phone call on Monday from his counterpart in the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder, who he said mentioned the possibility of extraditing Guzman.

Past extradition cases have dragged on for years.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said no official position has been reached on extradition.

"We're obviously appreciative of the fact that El Chapo was captured and we congratulate the Mexican government," he said.

Sensitivities over the issue could mean Guzman is more likely to face justice first in Mexico, where he still has an outstanding term to finish after he broke out of prison in 2001.

Fears of a repeat escape might encourage Mexico's government to hand Guzman over to the United States, but it would also be a tacit admission of ongoing weakness in the justice system. Crime bosses have served terms first in one country, then the other.

While Guzman has been charged with an array of crimes in Mexico, murder is not among them, government and justice officials said. That is despite accusations by security officials that his cartel was behind thousands of killings.

"The main charges against him are for organized crime, drug trafficking, arms trafficking," said an official at the attorney general's office, adding there were six arrest orders for Guzman. "There were no murder charges ... in any of the arrest orders."

The charges could carry a combined total sentence of up to 400 years, the officials said.

The 56-year-old kingpin is being held in the Altiplano prison in the State of Mexico, outside the capital. He gave a brief statement to a judge Sunday, and is being kept in a cell alone in a maximum security area.

The United States had a $5 million bounty on Guzman's head. His cartel has smuggled billions of dollars' worth of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine into the United States, and fought brutal turf wars with other gangs across Mexico. In addition to facing U.S. criminal charges in Chicago and New York, Guzman was indicted in 2007 in Miami for cocaine smuggling, with additional charges added last month.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago brought the charges against Guzman in Chicago in 2009, after the two cartels began a feud and two brothers, Pedro and Margarito Flores, who had been working with the cartels began cooperating with federal investigators.

The case against Guzman and the other cartel leaders alleges the brothers took delivery of about 2 tons of cocaine a month and large amounts of heroin between 2005 and 2008. Because of its central location in the U.S. transportation network, Chicago has been a key location for Guzman's cartel, according to the indictments against him, with the Flores brothers' drug-distribution group in Chicago repackaging drugs for areas from Philadelphia to Vancouver.

Former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Cramer, who worked in Chicago until four years ago on a variety of cases, including the indictment of Jon Burge, the Conrad Black trial, and on narcotics cases, described the apprehension of El Chapo as a "very substantial event."

"The fact that he was taken alive is critically important," said Cramer, who spent 12 years as a federal prosecutor though he never worked on the El Chapo case.

The massive quantities of narcotics that authorities say El Chapo distributed definitely made their way to Chicago, said Cramer.

"It's hard to put an exact number on it but it's fair to say that given the extent of his organization, a disproportionate, an extremely large part of the drugs would make their way to the streets of Chicago," Cramer said. "Given the magnitude of this organization and the breadth of this organization, a large percentage of drugs that are on the streets of Chicago certainly came through or touched his organization at some point."

As the drugs flowed north, the money moved south, the indictment said, with "millions of dollars in cash" stored in safe houses as it was gradually transferred to the cartel in Mexico. Guzman himself, the indictment said, "regularly received multimillion-dollar payments."

To keep the drugs and money flowing, cartel operatives used "cellular telephones, satellite telephones, computers and hand-held PDAs," the latter otherwise known as Palm Pilots.

Guzman also has been charged in Texas with importing cocaine and marijuana, money laundering, firearms violations and running a criminal enterprise that included murder.

If convicted in the U.S., Guzman probably would serve out his life in Colorado's federal "supermax" prison, home to dangerous, high-profile prisoners.

The seizure of a phone belonging to the son of Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman's deputy at the U.S.-Mexico border was an important break in the operation that led to the drug lord's capture, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said on Sunday.

The world's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, arrived at the Mexico City airport after his arrest early Saturday and was being taken directly to prison, said Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam. (Feb. 22)